Vox(75)

Lorenzo and I collect our bags. He’s allowed to take his coffee maker, but nothing else, from his office before Poe closes the door and leads us out to security. Everything is the same: two soldiers, one X-ray machine for our bags, and zero smiles now that Sergeant Petroski is off duty. One by one, we’re frisked, our pockets are searched, and the soldier working me over spends an unpleasant amount of extra time on my crotch and cleavage. From the look on Lorenzo’s face, he’s getting the same treatment down below.

Every possibility runs through my mind now. Full-body search. Anonymous hands—only obeying orders, ma’am—roaming over me, sliding into places they don’t belong, finding the latex-wrapped vial. What’s this, Jean? Morgan will say. I see myself on a thousand television screens, a surprise performance interrupting a news segment, a documentary on Bengal tigers, a cartoon. Me, next to Reverend Carl as he reads off another chapter and verse, as camera flashes blind me, as my scalp burns from the sting of a sloppy razor job. I see the horror in Patrick’s eyes as he’s bused to Fort Meade and forced to stand at attention while my blood mixes with the remains of Jimbo and Del and Sharon and god knows who else. Maybe my own son.

Instead, we’re shown the door.

“Nothing like a little Here’s your hat—what’s your hurry?” I say when we’re out in the late-afternoon light.

Poe watches us walk toward our cars. If he hears what I’ve said, I don’t know, but he calls out after us. “Leave. And don’t come back here.” He disappears inside the building, hands stuffed into his pockets. I think I see him sigh.





SIXTY-THREE




I use Lorenzo’s phone to call Patrick and tell him I’m on my way home. Lorenzo, of course, still has a cell phone; I don’t.

You would if you were in Italy, kiddo, I tell myself, but push the thought out of my head. I can’t think about that right now. I can’t think about anything except getting into my car and getting this poison out of my body.

“So,” Lorenzo says, taking hold of my left wrist, stroking the old burn with his thumb. “I have to get out, you know. While there’s still time.”

“I know.”

He breaks away and opens the passenger door of his car. From the glove compartment, he removes a slim envelope and hands it to me. “This is for you.”

It feels like a passport, and something else, something flat and hard. A smartphone is my best guess.

“Give me a second,” I say.

I pull the door closed and hitch up my skirt, ridding myself of the latex-wrapped package and stowing it in one of Sonia’s pastel sippy cups. She’s outgrown them, but juice in a plastic cup has always been a happy alternative to juice all over the Honda’s windshield. The lid snaps closed and I breathe easily again.

“Jean!” Morgan is running toward us, arms out, frantic. The soldier behind him takes measured strides, arms relaxed—except for the slight crook at the left elbow and the splayed hand poised too close to his service weapon. He’s a picture of military discipline. It’s a good thing for Morgan he wasn’t around during the draft era. The kid would probably die in his first foxhole. If, that is, his platoon didn’t get to him first.

Lorenzo’s envelope goes under my car seat, as if someone else’s hand is obeying instructions from a foreign brain. I don’t think about it, only reach down automatically, sliding the evidence out of sight before Morgan, now at my window, catches me with the passport of Lorenzo’s dead wife. I don’t know what the penalty is for carrying forged identification, and I’m not at all eager to find out.

The serum, unfortunately, has to stay where it is for a while longer.

“We need you back inside,” Morgan says.

“Why?” I say, starting the Honda’s engine and faking ignorance. “If I forgot something, I’ll get it tomorrow. I haven’t seen my kids all weekend.” Only then does it occur to me why I’m wanted back inside. The project’s over, and so is my reprieve from silence.

Morgan reaches into my window with one small pink hand. At the same time, Lorenzo steps in between us. “Let her go,” Lorenzo says.

The soldier hasn’t moved, except to draw his service weapon. I know shit about guns, but I know enough to understand where this could end up if I don’t take some control. Fast.

“Enzo. You need to leave,” I say, seeing in his eyes that he’s got zero intention of moving from his position between the steadiness of that steel barrel and my open window. He proves my point.

“Neither of you is leaving,” Morgan says.

The clock on my dashboard takes an eternity to turn from one thirty-six to one thirty-seven.

“Okay.” I take my hands off the steering wheel. “Okay. I’m turning the car off.” With my left hand still in the air, I kill the Honda’s engine with my right. “Okay? Can I get out now?”

Morgan, who has squirmed as far from the line of fire as possible, signals to the soldier, and the gun moves down slightly. It does not go back into its holster as I open the car door.

Morgan leads our four-person parade across the parking lot. I take little comfort in knowing Lorenzo is a few paces behind me, a vulnerable shield between several rounds of ammunition and my own body. We’re waved through the security checkpoint and herded into an elevator. This time, instead of hitting the button for the basement floor, Morgan inserts his key card and presses SB. Sub-basement.